“The discontent,” said the princess, “which is thus unreasonable, I hope, that I shall always have spirit to despise, and you power to repress.”

“Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “will not always be without reason under the most just and vigilant administration of publick affairs.  None, however attentive, can always discover that merit, which indigence or faction may happen to obscure; and none, however powerful, can always reward it.  Yet, he that sees inferiour desert advanced above him, will naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice; and, indeed, it can scarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by nature, or exalted by condition, will be able to persist, for ever, in the fixed and inexorable justice of distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own affections, and sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he loves, qualities which, in reality, they do not possess; and to those, from whom he receives pleasure, he will, in his turn, endeavour to give it.  Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail, which were purchased by money, or by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility.

“He that has much to do will do something wrong, and, of that wrong must suffer the consequences; and, if it were possible that he should always act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by mistake.

“The highest stations cannot, therefore, hope to be the abodes of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy, and placid obscurity.  For what can hinder the satisfaction, or intercept the expectations of him, whose abilities are adequate to his employments; who sees, with his own eyes, the whole circuit of his influence; who chooses, by his own knowledge, all whom he trusts; and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear?  Surely he has nothing to do, but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy.”

“Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,” said Nekayah, “this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding.  But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness, in proportion to visible virtue.  All natural, and almost all political evils, are incident alike to the bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest, and are driven together from their country by invaders.  All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember, that patience must suppose pain.

CHAP.  XXVIII.

RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.